


the sweep of wind

by The_Wavesinger



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 14:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21375454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/pseuds/The_Wavesinger
Summary: Leia and Rey, after.
Relationships: Leia Organa/Rey
Comments: 11
Kudos: 42
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	the sweep of wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [indigo_inks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigo_inks/gifts).

A handful of Rebels—of Resistance members—at the very edge of the universe, huddled in a broken-down ship fleeing to the corners of the known galaxy, and this is still a victory. A victory, because a handful of Resistance members still live, to fight. A victory, because they were not all destroyed. A victory, because they had time (they were bought time) to escape, to live.

The Resistance still exists. It may not flourish, but Leia, who saw Alderaan blown to pieces before her eyes, who has lived through too many wars, still counts it a ragged victory. They have lost too much in service of this handful of people to call it anything else.

(Amilyn, gone in a flash of courage Leia could never hope to dream of. Luke, that last moment, and then with so much still between them, slain at the hands of her s—

But Leia can’t afford to think of Ben right now. Of any of them, really, but of Ben most of all.)

“We have won,” Leia says. “We live to fight another day.”

The desperate eyes looking at her take in her words. She doesn’t think they believe her, not exactly, but—

“We live to fight another day,” Rey repeats, and her eyes are grim and her mouth is set, and she transforms Leia’s despair into blazing threat.

Leia is suddenly, sharply, glad she’s on their side.

—

Rey is a damn good pilot. Leia’s known a lot of good pilots, in her time (liked a lot of good pilots, fallen for them over and over again, mostly to her own detriment), and Rey is right up there with all of them.

Flying evasive manoeuvres through an asteroid field, it almost feels like old times.

“Hold on,” Rey shouts, and they’re lurching sideways and upwards into a loop around hurtling rocks, and then suddenly they’re out of the asteroid field, and the First Order fighter isn’t following them anymore.

They’re safe.

“We’re sure they’re not tracking us?” Leia asks.

“I did the scans. Nothing broadcasting, as far as the sensors detect, and this is the first ship we’ve encountered since—since.” Even as she’s speaking, Rey is working the _Falcon_, pulling them into hyperspace, away from the hurtling asteroids and from ships that could blow up the last hope the galaxy has not to fall under the First Order. “We should be fine.”

Leia sighs. _Fine_ is relative these days. They’ve been drifting, and she knows everyone is waiting for her to give the orders, to make a decision. And she knows what she has to do, knows where they’ll find safe harbour, but some small part of her—

But sentimentality isn’t a luxury she can afford right now.

She takes a deep breath, and gives Rey the co-ordinates.

(Chewie places a large hand on her shoulder when Rey gives her a wounded look and asks, “You couldn’t have told me earlier?”

At least someone understands.)

—

Tatooine is—

Leia never understood why (because she was from Alderaan, maybe, and she couldn’t not think about Alderaan with the memorials and mourning and the symbol it became), but Luke didn’t like to talk about Tatooine. There was always a pinched look on his face when he mentioned _home_, and by the time Ben was old enough to understand and remember, he’d stopped talking about it altogether.

Rey wears the same look on her face, now, as they stand at the mouth of a crater that looks into a house. Luke’s old house, protected by some miracle (or, not a miracle so much as—but that’s another thing Leia doesn’t want to think about) from the ravages of time. She’s facing the long stretch of sand that disappears into the horizon, and her jaw is clenched, her usually-bright eyes dimmed and caught in some long-lost memory.

Leia doesn’t say anything.

This is something she doesn’t understand, could never understand.

But she places a hand on Rey’s shoulder, and, when Rey doesn’t resist, draws her into her arms.

There’s no-one else, just the two of them, everyone gone down to settle into the house, and that, maybe, is what allows Rey to let go. She shudders and shakes and weeps into Leia’s arms.

Leia stares into the two fading suns.

The tears won’t flow. She holds them back, because still, even now, she’s the one who leads. She stands alone.

—

“You need to teach me how to use the Force better,” Rey says.

She’s back from a scouting trip, unwrapping cloth strips from around her head and shaking sand out of them using the Force. Her brows are pinched in concentration. “I still can’t—I don’t have _control_. I can do things, but I don’t know how to control them.”

Leia looks up from where she’s poring over maps and trying to figure out how to get messages to the very few allies she has left without blowing their cover and broadcasting their location to the First Order. “I don’t—Luke was always the Jedi.” (And there’s always that twinge, now, _Luke_, and she knows from long experience that it’ll never go away.) “You’re more of a Jedi than I could ever be. I’m sorry, Rey, I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know how.” Unsaid: you’re our best hope. Maybe our only hope.

(It sickens Leia, sometimes, that she’s going to send this girl out to war with her son instead of going to face him herself, but she doesn’t have a choice. She’s never had a choice, not in these things.)

“Please,” Rey says, and there’s something in her voice that’s close to desperation. The grains of sand are trembling mid-air, now. “I feel—I don’t know how to feel, about any of this, and there’s this _darkness_ inside me. I don’t—I feel like if I misstep, just once, I’ll fall off the edge and everything will crash down.” Her eyes are glassy and her hands are trembling, and she throws the cloth strips to the ground. “I can’t.”

For a moment—a moment—a thrill of fear runs through Leia.

But she _knows_ Rey. She thought she knew Ben, yes, but he never said these things to her. Rey stands here, open and vulnerable, divulging her deepest darkest secrets, and that tells Leia enough.

“You’re not going to turn into my son,” Leia says firmly.

A chastised look flashes across Rey’s face, but Leia ignores it, getting up to place her hands firmly on Rey’s shoulder. “Rey. You made a choice, and you’re making that choice over and over again. That’s all any of us can do, to stop ourselves from being evil. There’s no magic switch to turn that struggle off.” Goodness knows Luke struggled enough, and maybe the fact that Ben didn’t talk to her should have been suspicious, but hindsight and all that.

Rey is looking at her, and she’s so young. Leia knows she was that young, knows what she did younger than that age (the history books would tell her even if she forgot), but still, she’s so young. “There’s this one exercise, that Luke talked about, but—”

“Please,” Rey says. Her eyes are wide, pleading, guileless.

Leia is weak. She concedes. “I’ll teach you.”

—

The thing about Rey is, she’s _good_.

She struggles and sweats and it takes her work, but Leia can feel the Force calling out to Rey, dancing with her, enveloping her, the favoured child, its most precious thing. Rey basks in that glow, and as she tries, she lights up, in body and in the Force, and she’s beautiful.

“It loves you,” Leia says quietly. “The Force.”

Rey laughs, a bashful, tiny sound, and the ball of sand slips from her fingers and loses the multi-coloured hues she’d imbued it with.

The startlement on her face is chased away by pure joy as the sand rises up into shape again, molded by the pure power of her thought. Her eyes are bright, soft strands of her hair escaping the braid she’s tied it in to frame her face, and all of a sudden, Leia wants to kiss her.

Leia has denied herself, over and over again, sacrificed in the name of fighting evil, but this one thing, maybe—

She reaches out and kisses Rey.

After a moment, Rey leans in and kisses her back.


End file.
